Latvian director Dāvis Sīmanis began his cinematic quest to understand immortality in unlikely fashion. A few years ago, he was working on a completely different documentary, D Is For Division (2018), exploring the vexed relationship between Latvia and its big brother across the border, namely Russia, and also looking at growing tensions between Ukraine and Russia.
By complete chance, he met some representatives of a company working in the field of cryonics. They specialised in freezing (“hibernating”) people in the hope that they could be resurrected at some date in the future.
“We took a little detour. It was remarkably strange to be there,” Sīmanis remembers of the chance encounter which has led to his new project, Frankenstein 2.0 (being pitched at Sunny Side Of The Doc this week). He and his colleagues shot some footage of the cryonics company in action. “We thought, ok, this could be something for the future that we could work on.”
The filmmakers himself recently turned 40. He is a new father and has been having some “existential thoughts” about the meaning of life. That was another reason for exploring immortality.
“It’s not that I would like to live forever. It’s just that eventually you start to think of how to deal with the question of your death,” Sīmanis volunteers. “Whenever you are making a film about immortality, it means you are making a film about death.”
In case anyone thinks he is becoming too morbid or introspective, Sīmanis reassures potential viewers that Frankenstein 2.0 is intended to be funny, not solemn. It is dealing with provocative issues but he wants the audience to have “a good time” while they’re watching it.
The film deals both with the American way of death and with the Russian approach to the same subject. Inevitably, just as the two countries have raced each other to space and been engaged in a Cold War, they also compete in the “immortality business.”
“These two countries are trying to prove that they are the best in it.”
No-one in the east or west has yet cracked the secret of prolonging human life indefinitely. That hasn’t stopped them from trying, though.
In the US, Sīmanis suggests, the wealthiest people are the most open to experimenting in how best to trump death. “[But] in Russia, I would say it is more political,” the director suggests. “Already, from the Soviet times, it [research into immortality] has always been connected with prolonging the lives of the leaders.”
It remains highly unlikely that everyone is going to be able to live forever, even if science and technology enable some humans to defy death. That means choices will need to be made. Sīmanis is fascinated by what criteria will be used to select the happy few immortals. “It will be a huge, huge socio-political struggle between those who have the rights, the money and the ways to do it – and those who won’t have the opportunities.”
In order to tell his mind-bending story, Sīmanis has recruited Artūrs Skrastiņš, one of Latvia’s best known theatre actors. The director saw him on stage playing Dr Frankenstein (in a very Hamlet-like way he remembers). He has also worked with Skrastiņš before, casting him in the lead role in his Holocaust drama The Mover (2018).
In the documentary, Skrastiņš goes undercover, pretending he is a client ready to pay for a dose of immortality.
“I think, in some way, he [Skrastiņš] in some way reflects myself,” Sīmanis reflects. “He will be in front of the camera but his thoughts will be connected with my thoughts and how I treat this subject.”
Sīmanis thinks the actor “fits the role” in the documentary very well. “He is 50 now and he is also really, in a way, desperate about himself. He thinks about his own career, how it has developed, and also about his own life.” As an actor, Sīmanis continues, Skrastiņš is “always having to change roles and not really having his own personality, playing many different personalities at once. That, somehow, is also fitting the subject.”
The film explores the links between cryonics and bitcoin. This strand comes from an “accidental” meeting Sīmanis had with bitcoin programmer Ted Miller in Russia. Miller had come to the country to explore the phenomenon of preserving human corpses in huge vats of liquid nitrogen. “We met him, and started to talk with him. He mentioned the fact that he was a blockchain entrepreneur and that cryptocurrencies were his business. For me, there is a huge link…the virtuality of this new world not only in terms of cryptocurrencies but in other ways as well, I think this is something that lets you believe in something like immortality,” he says, referring to bio-hacking and “other trans-humanistic approaches.”
Sīmanis has shot around 20% of the “principal footage” of the film, which is being made through Latvian company Ego Media. He and producer Guntis Trekteris have taken the project to various pitching forums already. They plan to resume shooting in August and to “hurry with the production.” 50% of the budget is in place. They have Czech partners aboard and are looking for another co-production partner. They are also hoping for pre-sales and have a pre-agreement with sales agent, Syndicado. The aim is to have the film ready for delivery by late next year.
